


bananas and guns and bananas

by Kleenexwoman



Series: shoplifting from tao lin [1]
Category: Man From U.N.C.L.E.
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Hipsters, K-Mart Realism, Other, tao lin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-20
Updated: 2011-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-27 14:40:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/296945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kleenexwoman/pseuds/Kleenexwoman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>everyone is hipsters in 2011</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

On Thursday, Illya woke up at 12:30 PM. He didn't bother to shower. His grandmother had already left for the day. He could tell, because there was a note on the fridge in Russian. Illya could read "Illya" and "mah-jonng" and "beef stew" but not much else. He felt kind of guilty about not being able to read the rest of it, and then felt a little less guilty because he had been completely vegan for five years and his grandmother still couldn't remember that. He took a Bolthouse Farms Vanilla Chai smoothie from the fridge and drank it before he went to work.

It was nice out, so he rode his fixed-gear to the Whole Foods in Tribeca. He said "Hey" to his manager, Sunflower, and she said "Hey" back. Then he put the green Whole Foods apron around his head and went to stand in the checkout line.

His first customer was Alex. Alex bought a package of Whole Foods 365 water crackers and a box of Organic Earl Grey teabags, and some bananas. "Young man," Alex said, "are these bananas fair trade?"

"I think," Illya said. He looked at the labels on the bananas. "No," he said, "they're from San Veronica."

"Ah," Alex said. "Does that make a difference?"

"Yeah," Illya said. "I'm sorry, I don't know why we sell these."

"Why are bananas from San Veronica not fair trade?" Alex asked. Illya looked behind Alex to see if there was anyone in line behind him.

"The United Fruit Company bribed the United States to covertly topple several democratically elected republics in South America and back dictators so that they could get lower prices on fruit," Illya said. "Like, in the 60's."

"Really, now?" Alex raised his eyebrows. He had really bushy, grey eyebrows.

"Yeah," Illya said. "You can Google it. Do you still want the bananas?"

"No, thank you." Alex left the bananas on the counter.

"Do you want to donate some money to help women in Rwanda?" Illya asked. He showed Alex a flyer. It had a woman sitting in the dirt on the front. She looked sad.

"Yes, please." Alex gave him a dollar.

"The women of Darfur thank you," Illya said. He put Alex's crackers and tea into a paper bag.

Illya spent an hour checking out people in line, and then it slowed down and Sunflower told him to go stock some fruit. He spent a few hours lifting boxes of clementines over his head. At lunch, he took a bottle of Cosmic Cranberry Kombucha and a plastic container of curry tofu salad to the break room and ate.

He told his manager, Sunflower, about the bananas from San Veronica.

"But they have the fair trade sticker on them," she said.

"But they're from San Veronica," he said. "The bananas are unethical."

"It's good that you're being conscientous and informed," Sunflower said, "but I'm not sending those bananas back. That's like five hundred pounds of bananas."

His lunch break was almost over, so Illya just took a sticky note and wrote "NOT REALLY FAIR TRADE" on it. He stuck it onto the sign advertising the bananas. They were sixty-seven cents a pound.

He went home, and his grandmother was there, smoking her pipe and counting her mah-jonng winnings. "Illya-leh," she said, "you didn't eat the stew I left in the icebox for you."

"You can have it," Illya said. He took a Boca Burger from the freezer and started to warm it up.

"If you don't eat meat, you'll stay skinny," his grandmother said. "But it's your call." She took a fifty-dollar bill and pushed it towards Illya. "Go buy some rabbit food for yourself. I won three hundred and fifty from Margo Greenbaum today."

"Isn't she totally senile by now?" Illya asked.

"Almost. It's like shooting fish in a bucket." His grandmother grinned. "Don't feel bad. She has more money than she knows what to do with and she spends it all on that rotten little dog of hers."

Illya took the money and put it in his pocket. "Yeah," he said, "I don't really feel bad about it."

"Thank Margo Greenbaum's lousy tiles," his grandmother said. "I love it. Here, the wealth practically redistributes itself."

Illya looked around at the little apartment. The stove was caked over with crud, the couch was sagging, and the walls were covered with squashed spiders because his grandmother liked to slam books on them and then leave them. "Truly," he said, "it is paradise."

He went to his room with his Boca Burger and logged onto his computer. He looked up the Wikipedia article for San Veronica. It briefly mentioned the 1965 coup, but didn't mention the United Fruit Company anywhere. He googled "1965 San Veronica United Fruit Company" and found an article on JStor that he couldn't read and an old recipe for banana pudding that someone had scanned in from a copy of Good Housekeeping from 1973.

Then he logged onto Facebook. Marion Raven had poked him and invited him to a "Stupid Hat Party." It was on Friday.

"Thanks for the invite, but I don't have any stupid hats," he said to her.

"Pick one up at the Salvo," she said. "I haven't seen you in a month."

"Maybe," Illya said. "I might have to work or clean my room or go to synagogue or something, I don't know."

Marion didn't say anything for a while. Illya wasn't sure if she was mad at him or just busy. He googled "Banana republic San Veronica black ops" and found a Banana Republic coat on eBay for $12. It didn't look like it would fit him.

"I'm making the stuff with the zucchini," she said. "I'm making it just for you. Come over on Friday."

The stuff with the zucchini was really good. When Marion had worked at the Whole Foods in Tribeca with Illya, she had made it for the deli counter. When she left, nobody else had remembered how to make it or had figured out how to replicate it. Illya missed Marion a little, but he really missed the stuff with the zucchini. He thought it was easier to miss food than to miss people, sometimes.

"Okay," he said. "I will come over in a stupid hat for the stuff with the zucchini."

 

On Friday, Illya woke up at 4 PM.

"Do you have any old hats I could borrow?" he asked his grandmother.

She squinted at him. "What for?"

"I'm going to a party where you have to wear a hat."

"So get a fedora," she said. "You'd look so handsome in a fedora."

"Everybody wears those," Illya said, "and anyway, they don't ever fit me."

"You have your father's head," his grandmother said. "Like a melon. Wait here." She got up and went into her room, and came back holding something large and furry. "It's your grandfather's," she said proudly. "He wore it in the Old Country."

"Is that real fur?" Illya asked.

"No, it's stretch polyester. Of course it's real. Your grandfather made this out of minks he trapped himself." She stuck it on Illya's head. "He was a real man! You look gorgeous in it." She turned Illya around so he faced the hall mirror.

"I look like a Cossack." Illya squinted at himself. He went to his room to change into his third-favorite T-shirt. It was from Threadless, and it had a picture of Vladimir Lenin in a party hat and Karl Marx with a lampshade on his head.

Illya thought about whether the hat constituted endorsement of cruelty to animals, but it wasn't like he was buying the hat from a store.

He said goodbye to his grandmother and rode his bike up to Williamsburg. He could never remember exactly where Marion's apartment was, but he knew that it was a few blocks away from a playground and then next to a record store that always had a cut-out of James Bond in the window, pointing his gun at unsuspecting shoppers.

The sun was setting, and Illya missed the playground and kept going. The neighborhood became less trendy and raffish, and more stolid, brown and uniform. Illya saw shimmering lights in the windows of the houses he passed. His legs began to ache, which was normal when he rode his bike a long ways, and then his chest began to ache, which wasn't. He thought about his grandma and wondered what she was doing. He worried for a second that he was having a heart attack, but he was pretty sure it was something else, and that it would go away once he got to Marion's.

Eventually he figured out where he was and made it to the playground, then the record store with James Bond pointing a gun at him, then Marion's. He locked his bike by the alley. There were a bunch of other fixed-gear bikes in it.

Marion opened the door. She was wearing a beret.

"Hey," she said. "You made it. What the hell is that on your head?"

"It's a beaver!" said a guy behind Marion. It sounded like he was drunk and thought he was funny.

"It's my grandpa's," said Illya. "He killed it with his own two hands. With his teeth. You said there was zucchini stuff?"

"Right to the point, aren't you?" Marion led him through the apartment. People were standing around with cans of PBR. A lot of people just had ugly woollen caps, although one girl had a rubber duck taped onto her head. "I don't know if you know everybody," she said. "I'm not going to introduce you. I don't know everybody. Some people just sort of came."

"That's okay," Illya said. "I didn't really want to talk to anyone anyway."

"Then why did you come?" Marion asked. She smiled at him to make it seem like she was joking. "I know, the zucchini stuff."

"I don't know," Illya said. "I always feel like I should be doing something on Friday night." They went into the kitchen. Marion's kitchen was small, and she had some bowls set out on the table, and there was a guy in a fez making out with a blonde girl in a black pillbox hat. They were leaning against the refrigerator.

"People need to get in there," Marion said.

"Sorry," the guy said, and the blonde girl gave her a dirty look, but they went out of the kitchen.

"Zucchini." Marion handed Illya a paper plate and plopped a wad of the zucchini stuff onto it. "Nobody else is going to eat it. Some people were ordering pizza. So...Fridays. And stuff."

Illya started eating the zucchini stuff. It was exactly as good as he remembered it. "I feel like I should be doing something, because it's Friday and I should recognize that. I don't know if I want to, though. I mostly want to get home every night and talk to people on the computer, like I do every night. Or not even talk. Just try to make a new computer or build a robot or something. Going out on Friday night is like, I don't know...eating your vegetables." He ate more of the zucchini stuff. "Except I actually want to eat this, and I feel like I _should_ be going to parties. No--like I _want_ to want to. Like I _should_ want to."

"So you want to hide in your room and only talk to people you can't see?" asked Marion.

"Yeah. And that's probably not healthy, or something. Do you ever feel like that?"

"Not really. I like having people around. I like having everyone in the next room, even though I'm just in here talking to you and you don't want to talk to anyone. I like having them around even when I don't know them, because I know that I'm the reason that they're here." Marion watched him eat. "That's why I made the zucchini stuff."

"You can make the zucchini stuff whenever you like," Illya said, "and I'll probably come over. Even if it's not a party. Especially if it's not a party."

"Oh," Marion said. She looked at him carefully, and Illya thought maybe she was going to smile. "That's sweet. I'll keep it in mind."

Illya was going to say something else, but then the door opened, and the guy in the fez came in. "Hey," he said. "I just wanted more PBR."

"Help yourself, it's in the fridge," Marion said.

"Oh, right." The guy looked at Illya, then got out a beer, and then looked at Illya again. "You look really familiar. Did you go to Belden Prep in, like...the mid 2000s? Around there?"

"I graduated from Orlovsky," Illya said, "'06."

"See, that's the same year I graduated," the guy said, "and I seriously remember you in one of those ugly little maroon blazers. You never went to Belden?" He sat down at the kitchen table and opened his PBR. "What about NYU? Have I seen you in class?"

"I don't go to NYU," Illya said, "excuse me." He felt sort of queasy and he thought the weird ache in his chest was coming back. He left the kitchen and went to Marion's bathroom.

Marion gave him five minutes before she started hammering on the door. "If you're puking, I'm coming in," she said, "and if you're just being a hermit I'm going to drag you out and introduce you to somebody. I have better things to do at my party than to babysit you."

Illya opened the door. "So go do them," he said.

"I don't smell puke," Marion said. " _Do_ you know that guy?"

"Do you?" Illya asked.

"He was in my Psych class. At NYU. Do you have some kind of inferiority complex about school?" Marion tilted her head to one side.

"No," Illya said. "I went to Belden for a year and he was an asshole."

"He's nice," Marion said.

"To you, sure. He always was nice to girls. I don't want to talk to him. I'll just go."

"Oh my god," Marion said, "no, you will not. You are going to stay here and eat that zucchini shit, I spent an hour grating the zucchini. Did you really go to Belden? You totally don't seem like a Belden kid."

Illya left the bathroom. He didn't see the guy in the fez, so he took his plate of the zucchini stuff and a beer and went up to the roof. He liked Marion's roof. It was quiet, and he could see the last rays of the sun winking out behind a brownstone a few blocks away. He watched the rays disappear and felt a little more settled.

After a little while, he heard someone walking on the roof. He thought it was Marion, and turned around. It was the guy in the fez.

"Look," the guy said, "I'm sorry if I was a jerk to you in high school. I don't remember it, but I'm sorry. You just looked familiar, and I wanted to say hi."

"Hi," Illya said. "You were. The guys you hung out with would do all sorts of shit, trip me and steal my shit and and tell everyone I had lice or stupid crap like that. I got swirlied three times in one semester."

The guy looked upset. "I swear to god, I never swirlied anyone."

"You probably didn't," Illya said. "But your friends did. You didn't do anything."

"Then what are you mad at me for?" the guy asked. "It was Larry and Jake who did that stuff to you. I never did."

"You didn't say anything," Illya said. "That's just as bad."

"I'm not going to apologize for things that Larry and Jake did," the guy said. "I don't even hang out with them anymore."

"I don't expect you to," Illya said. "I don't care anymore. I'm just saying, that happened."

 

Illya slept for most of Saturday. He woke up at 11 AM on Sunday and it was raining outside, so he took a long shower and reread most of Pictures for Sad Children before he took the subway to the Whole Foods in Tribeca.

Alex was Illya's first customer again. He bought a carton of Horizon Farms 2% Milk and some butter that came in a crock instead of a box. Illya had to look up the code for "butter" on the cash register.

"Do you stock Nestle products?" Alex asked. "I was looking for their brand of Mexican cocoa. My nieces and nephews adore it."

"No," Illya said. "Nestle..." He felt tired. "They pretty much do horrible things in developing countries. Not on the scale of toppling governments, but they will screw up entire populations to sell products that the people they're trying to sell them to can't afford. So we don't. You can just look this stuff up."

"Ah," Alex said, "but you're always so well-informed. May I donate a dollar to the women of Rwanda?"

Illya scanned the flyer and added the dollar to Alex's bill. "The women of Rwanda get these free samples of baby formula from Nestle," he said, "and then they feed them to their babies instead of breastmilk, because Nestle tells them it's better. Then at about the time that they sort of dry up, Nestle stops the free samples, so they have to pay full price. And that's pretty much all the money they have. It bankrupts them."

Alex's eyebrows rose again. "Devious," he said. "Underhanded."

"That's corporations for you." Illya bagged his milk and butter.

"I ought to look these things up," Alex said. "I suppose I ought to buy a computer to do so. What kind of computer do you have?"

"I built my own. I don't know what kind it is. I picked up some old parts at the Salvo--the Salvation Army, sorry--and sort of..." Illya shrugged. "It's not really that hard. You just have to know what kind of memory you want and then learn to solder."

Alex looked impressed. "I don't believe I could ever do that," he said. "What a talent. Why are you working at Whole Foods when you could be working at IBM? Make a career for yourself."

Illya thought about it while Alex flipped through his wallet. "I like it here," he said. "I feel like I'm contributing to society and the environment by selling ethically responsible food to people."

"By telling them to avoid colonialist bananas," Alex said, "and Nestle."

"Yeah." Illya smiled. Alex gave him a skeptical look. "It's low-pressure," he said, "I guess I like that. I don't feel like I need to be good at something to someone else's specifications. I can go home and do what I want."

"Ah," Alex said, "don't we live in a wonderful time, when geniuses bag groceries for the freedom of it all. Before I leave..." Alex put a business card on the counter, then pulled a pen out of his pocket and wrote something on it. He handed it to Illya. Illya looked at the card. It had Alex's name and address on it. He had written down "7:00 PM Friday" on it.

"Okay," Illya said.

"I'm having a small function at my house at that time," Alex said. "Not really a party--more of a meeting, to discuss such topics as we often do. I would certainly appreciate your presence."

"Okay," Illya said. "I'll see if I'm working Friday."

"You never work on Fridays," Alex said, and then left.

 

On Wednesday, Illya woke up at 1 PM and rode his bike to the Whole Foods in Tribeca. The sign on the bananas was gone.

After he punched in, his manager, Sunflower, told him to come into her office. Illya did, and shut the door behind him.

"The banana sign was not needed," Sunflower said, "nor wanted."

"But they really weren't fair trade," Illya said. "I just wanted to let customers know."

"As far as Whole Foods is concerned," Sunflower said, "they're fair trade. You can't just put up your own signs denigrating what the store is trying to sell to customers, Illya, it makes us look bad as a brand. It makes us look like we don't pay attention to our merchandise or to our corporate mission."

"But if employees take initiative to--"

"And we do pay attention to our corporate mission," Sunflower said. "I've looked into it. That farm the bananas came from was certified fair trade by the economic minster of San Veronica himself, Illya."

"Yes, but--" Sunflower shook her head, and Illya put his hands in his pockets.

"The bottom line is, it's not up to individual employees to decide for themselves what's in line with the store's vision. That's up to corporate, and you have to trust them." Sunflower gave him a little smile. The smile said, _Now that I've explained to you what's what, you won't cause any more trouble, will you? Good Illya._

"Okay?" Sunflower said.

"Okay," Illya said.

He took his fifteen-minute break and bought a bottle of Kava Kava extract from the herbal aisle and got a bottle of Ginger Peach Kombucha. He put some of the Kava Kava in the kombucha. The kombucha didn't mask any of the bitter, earthy taste of the Kava Kava, it just got more bitter and more earthy. Illya threw the kombucha away and put the bottle of Kava Kava in his pocket. He didn't feel any better at all.

He still wasn't feeling any better when the guy with the fez came through his line. He wasn't wearing the fez. He was wearing a pink polo shirt with the outline of a black bird stitched over the heart.

"Hi," he said to Illya. He put a six-pack of Arrogant Bastard Ale on the counter.

"Can I see your ID?" Illya asked. He didn't look up at the guy.

The guy gave him his driver's license. Illya took a long time looking at it.

"Don't laugh," the guy said,

Illya didn't feel like laughing.

"People always think it's a fake ID," the guy said. "It's a stupid name." He laughed a little.

Illya rang up the beer. "Twelve ninety-five."

"I'm buying it for a party," the guy named Napoleon said. "Do you want to come? Do you drink beer?"

"Arrogant Bastard is pretty good," Illya said. "It's not really a party beer, though." He glanced up at the guy for a second. There was a weird kind of desperation in his face that made Illya feel worse, added an ache in his chest to the nerves that seemed to be concentrating in his stomach.

"I liked the name," the guy named Napoleon said. He grinned at Illya.

Illya sighed. "When's the party?"

"Friday," the guy said, "my place."

"I'm busy," Illya said. He put the beer into a paper bag.

"Come on," the guy said. "You are not."

"How do you know? Cash or credit?"

"Credit. And you never go out. Marion told me." The guy handed Illya his credit card. "This isn't Belden Prep anymore. If I'm asking you to a party, I want you at the party. I'm not trying to make fun of you."

Illya ran the credit card. "I'll think about it," he said.

 

When Illya got home and logged on to his computer, he had one friend request on Facebook. He clicked it. It was the guy named Napoleon. "found u," the guy named Napoleon had said to him. "why don't u have belden listed on ur schools, had 2 look thru marion's friends 4 u and she has over 9000 lol"

There was also a notification that he had been tagged in Marion's new album "STUPID HAT PARTY AT THE CASA." Illya went through the album and untagged the pictures that had him in them. There were only three. Two of them were moody pictures of him on the roof, and one of them was a picture of him talking to the girl with the duck on her head. Illya was kind of impressed. He hadn't remembered her taking a picture of him on the roof, and he didn't remember talking to the duck girl at all.

He went to Marion's Flickr account and looked through her pictures. There were some pictures of the New York City subway system, tracks gleaming in faint light and water dripping down brick walls, and a few of the outside and inside of a grand abandoned building that he didn't recognize, stone walls cracked, art-deco frescoes defaced, the inside filled with old papers and decaying furniture. He was impressed again. He wondered how Marion had gotten into those places. He left a comment on one of them, saying, "This is really cool. Let me know when you explore the urban again, I want to come with you."

Then he went to his Facebook and updated his status. "Don't buy bananas from San Veronica," he said to everyone he knew. "Even if they are marked as being fair trade, they are not ethical."

He made a smoothie with soy protein, guava nectar, and some raspberries and mangos, and tried to make fake chicken soup with vegetable stock, jicama, carrots, and chopped-up Morningstar Farms Textured Soy Chicken Replacement Nuggets and some dill, but it didn't taste very good and he threw it out. Then he went back online and checked Facebook again. Marion had "liked" his status about the bananas. He felt a little better.


	2. Chapter 2

About five minutes later, Marion sent him a message on Facebook chat. "So, like, initiating social contact. You're making progress. Or maybe u thought I wouldn't notice stuff on my Flickr."

"I actually want to go urban exploring," Illya said. "It sounds really cool."

"It was an assignment for my photography class," Marion said. "The prof is rly big on meditation and stuff. We can totally go if u want, though."

Illya thought about it. Three notifications popped up. Marion had retagged his pictures.

"Only if it's just us," he said.

He went to Marion's Flickr again to check whether there was anyone else in the pictures.

"I mean, I like hanging out with you not at parties," he said. "I can bring lunch. Stuff from the deli counter."

"is this a date" Marion asked. "like your way of asking me out without asking me out"

"um" Illya said.

He logged off and went to the kitchen to see if his grandma had left any pierogi or anything like that in the fridge. She hadn't, but there were some Raweos on the counter. They were organic vegan Oreos. They didn't really taste like Oreos, but they were pretty good anyway.

Illya took the Raweos back to his room. He pried apart one with his teeth and then used his teeth to scrape out the icing. He put the two halves of the cookie between his lips so he could hold them in his teeth. He pulled up Notepad and started to write in it

"I really just want to spend time with you," he wrote. "You're probably the only person I can stand hanging out with for extended periods of time besides my grandma. I don't want to screw that up by trying to do the whole boyfriend-girlfriend thing." He went back and changed "can stand" to "like" and then said it to Marion.

Marion was quiet for a while, and Illya went to get a glass of hemp milk. When he came back, she'd said, "i don't really know how i feel about that"

"okay that's okay" Illya said.

"what do u mean screw up" she said.

"I don't know," Illya said. "Make things weird. I like the way we relate now."

"You mean where I make you interact with people and then you don't talk to anyone and run off with the zucchini stuff I made JUST FOR YOU," she said. Illya was glad she was back to using capital letters. "Maybe if you actually spent time with people who are not me or your grandma you'd feel better about going out with me."

Illya sat there with the cookies crumbling onto his tongue. He felt sort of shaky. He swallowed one of the cookies and took a sip of the hemp milk and wasn't really sure how he felt.

"It's a fucking moot point," Illya said to her, "because I don't want to spend time with other people and I don't want to do this whole "dating" thing with you."

"You are AMAZING," Marion said, "you are avoidant AND CO-DEPENDENT AT THE SAME TIME."

"sorry" Illya said.

Marion signed off. Illya ate five more cookies and drank the rest of the hemp milk and then went to bed.

 

On Thursday, Illya really didn't want to go to work. He woke up at 10:30 AM and then lay in bed for a few hours. He heard his grandma moving around in the kitchen. He thought she was making tea. Then he heard her turn on the TV, and heard people speaking in really dramatic Russian. Then she turned off the TV.

Illya heard his door open. He pretended to be asleep.

"Don't be late for work," his grandmother said.

"Okay," Illya said into his pillow.

His grandmother waited at the door for a few minutes. "You're sick," she said.

"I'm fine," Illya said, "I'm just tired."

"You're tired," his grandmother repeated. "I bet you have a fever, too. Does your neck ache? what about your stomach?"

Illya sat up before she got the chance to ask him about his bowel movements. "My neck's fine."

His grandmother put the back of her hand against his forehead. "Well, there's a pain in mine, and you're it," she said. "I told you, all you eat is your sprouts and your cookies and you get weak."

"I had a fight with a girl. I feel like shit." Illya dodged his grandmother's hand and got out of bed.

"A girl, huh?" His grandmother grinned. "You got a little girlfriend you haven't been telling me about?"

"Not little. Not a girlfriend. Just a girl. Who's a friend." Illya opened his closet and looked to see if he had any clean shirts.

"Huh," his grandmother said. "You want I should make you some pancakes? I'm going to make you some pancakes, you tell me all about her." She disappeared into the kitchen.

Illya ended up putting on a pair of ripped jeans and an old polo shirt that was too large for him. He went into the kitchen. His grandmother pushed him into a chair and banged a plate of pancakes onto the table in front of him. "Eat," she said.

His grandmother sat across the table from him and sipped from a cup of tea. When Illya's mouth was full, she said, "The trick is, you have to fight. But you don't stand around being a big man after you win. You go with your girl and you tell her, I wrestled that bear for you, I sucker-punched your jerk of a boyfriend in the face for you, I crossed an icy river in the middle of winter for you."

Illya stared at her. "Bear?" he mumbled.

"Your grandfather," his grandmother said, "he was a good man. I saw him wrestle a bear once, did you know that? It was starving, all scraggly, but it put up a good fight. And he jumped on it, he got it on the ground..." She made enthusiastic hand gestures. "And he took out his knife and he slit its throat."

Illya stopped eating the pancakes.

"Blood everywhere! And then he stood in front of me with that blood all over him, and you know, most men would have been roaring, would have let their friends slap them on the back and buy them drinks. But not your grandfather. No, he stands in front of me, he looks down on the ground..." She looked down on the ground. "And he looks back up." She looked back up. "And he says, quiet as you please, 'Well, Katya, what do you think?'"

"So," Illya said, "what did you think?"

"I thought he was a mess and smelled like bear blood," she said, "but I married him anyway. Any man who isn't scared of a bear but is scared of a woman, that's a good man."

"I'm pretty sure I'm not afraid of bears," Illya said.

 

Illya was late to work. It was the first time in a long time he'd been late to work.

"You're late," Sunflower said, as soon as he punched in.

"My grandmother wanted to tell me a story about bears," Illya said, "sorry." He started to put on his apron.

Sunflower took his apron away from him. "Surprise performance review," she said.

"Seriously?" Illya said. "Is this about the banana thing?"

"The incident with the perfectly good San Veronica shipment," Sunflower said, "yes. Corporate was in the store, Illya, and have you been telling people to boycott major corporations?"

"Nestle," Illya said, "yeah."

"That's not okay," Sunflower said.

"But we don't sell Nestle stuff," Illya said.

"That's not the point," Sunflower said, speaking very slowly and deliberately. "We are not trying to supplant or usurp other food markets, Illya, and we don't like our employees giving off the impression that we are. We are an alternative."

"Okay," Illya said.

"Some people just come in here to buy cheese or vitamins. Yes, we would like our customers to only purchase organic, fair-trade items from us. Yes, we would like that market share."

"Well, yeah, that's what I'm trying--"

"But the way to do that is not to make people feel bad about what they are already buying. Our marketing department has determined that that does. Not. Work. They will not switch, Illya, they will just stop coming here if the checkout boy makes them feel bad about buying their hot cocoa." Sunflower's expression changed. "Are you wearing a polo shirt?" she asked.

Illya shrugged. "It was clean."

"Okay," Sunflower said, "well." She put her hands on her hips and stared at Illya's shirt for a second. "I'm glad we had this talk," she said. "Also, try to work on your scans-per-minute, it's really low."

"Because I'm telling people not to buy Nestle," Illya said, "yeah."

"More scans, less boycott," Sunflower said. "Work on that."

Alex came in later. Illya didn't look at him. He scanned Alex's Concord grapes and the vanilla-flavored whey protein powder and the organic, gluten-free croissants he'd gotten from the bakery. They were two for a dollar.

"An extra dollar, please," Alex said, "for the women of Darfur."

"Rwanda," Illya said. He grabbed the brochure with the code on it and slapped it against the scanner. It didn't scan, and he had to lay it flat on the counter and raise and lower the scanner a few times before it worked.

"The grapes," Alex said, "they're all right, aren't they?"

"They're grapes," Illya said.

"Not perpetrating oppression, then," Alex said.

"No," Illya said.

"I suppose you weren't around then," Alex said, "but when I was a much younger man, grapes were the thing not to buy. The workers, you see--"

"The grapes are fine," Illya said. "Cash or credit?"

Alex rifled through his wallet. "I was wondering, in fact, about your opinion on--"

"Cash," Illya said, "or fucking credit?"

Alex stopped and looked up at Illya.

"Sorry," Illya said. "I'm really sorry."

"All right, then," Alex said in sort of a weird voice.

"Seriously," Illya said, "if you tell my manager I swore at you, I'm pretty sure I'll get fired." He realized that he didn't actually care if he got fired. Or if Alex was offended that Illya had said "fucking credit" to him. He looked like the kind of guy who would get really offended if someone said "fucking credit" to him.

Alex smiled at him. "Then I won't tell," he said, "I promise."

"Like, if you talk to my manager about me," Illya said, "people don't realize. Anything you say can get someone into trouble. Literally anything. You never know how corporate is going to take something that's not just 'This guy did a really good job bagging my groceries.' Even if you mean it as a good thing, they might think, oh, this guy isn't doing his job, this guy is doing something shady."

He punched in the PLU code for the grapes. When he looked up, Alex was staring at him.

"Um," said Illya.

Alex leaned forward. "Did they tell you not to talk?" he asked quietly. "Did they threaten you?"

"Um," Illya said again. "It's just a disciplinary action. It's not a big deal. It's not like they're going to break into my house and take my grandma."

"They might," Alex said. He looked like he was trying to speak without moving his lips. "It's how they operate, you know. Gradually. First they write you up. Then they fire you. Then you find that you can't get a job anywhere. You can't get a loan. They do share information, you know."

"Okay," Illya said. "That's $7.86 for the grapes. The oppression-free grapes," he added. "And then $12.99 for the protein powder, and the rolls, um, that's a dollar..."

"The rolls," Alex said, "are they--"

"Gluten-free, yeah," Illya said.

"I understand if you don't want to talk, now," Alex said. "I don't know what they did to you. But there is freedom."

 

On Friday, Illya woke up at 11:30 and checked Facebook. He really hoped Marion had sent him a message. She hadn't, but she'd updated her Facebook three times. The first time was with a Velvet Underground quote, the second time was with a picture of a stray kitten sitting on the sidewalk outside the record shop she lived next to, and the last one was from Foursquare, where she'd checked in at Skeiny Jean's Yarn and Textile Connection. Illya "liked" the Velvet Underground quote and the picture of the kitten. He said, "Aww, cute" to the kitten, and then commented on the Foursquare post.

"My grandma knits, you guys should do a multi-generational stitch and bitch thing" he said.

He waited a few seconds. "ur grandma's kewl," Marion said back to him.

"can you teach me to knit" Illya said.

"ask ur grandma then" Marion said.

"she wont teach me she says I have to learn to wrestle bears instead" Illya said.

"ok fine but then u have 2 teach me 2 wrestle bears" Marion said.

Illya felt a lot better. He went to the kitchen. There was a bunch of bananas on the counter. The bananas hadn't been there last night.

He stared at the bananas.

"Grandma," he yelled, "did you get bananas?"

His grandma didn't answer. Illya checked the living room, then he checked the bathroom, then he checked her room. She wasn't there.

"Fuck," Illya said. He went to the kitchen and found the box of Peanut Butter Puffins and started eating them right out of the box. He took them back to his room and tried to look up Alex on Facebook. There were a lot of Alex Waverleys on Facebook, but none of them looked remotely like the Alex that came into Whole Foods. Then he looked up "Alex Waverly" on Google. Every single result was for a girl who looked like she was thirteen and was in some kid's show about wizards or something.

"Sometimes I feel like I'm in one of those spy movies with Matt Damon," he said on Facebook.

He went back to the kitchen and looked for a note on the refrigerator. There wasn't any. When he came back to the computer, Napoleon had said, "those movies kinda rock." Then he had said, "matt damon is pretty awesome." Then he had said, "also the girl in those is really hot."

"Oh my god," Illya said out loud, "I feel like I am fucking going crazy."

His computer made a bubbling noise. Napoleon had written on his wall. "hey bro so party at my place 2day you should come I have that arrogant bastard stuff and some rockin nachos lol"

"Oh my god," Illya said out loud again. He checked Napoleon's address and put the address into Google and thought about telling Napoleon that he couldn't come because it was too far to bike and he didn't have money for the subway, but then Marion "liked" Napoleon's post on his wall. He went to take a shower.

Halfway through the shower, there was a loud, repetitive banging noise and the sound of shouting. Illya froze in the act of pouring diluted apple cider vinegar onto his head.

"Don't use up all the hot water!" his grandmother yelled.

Illya dropped the cup of diluted apple cider vinegar. "Did you buy those bananas?" he yelled back.

His grandma banged on the door one more time. "You can have some," she yelled, "just get out of that shower. You'll grow hair on your palms."

Illya got out of the shower really quickly. He put on his favorite jeans and his second favorite shirt from Threadless, which had a picture of a headless schoolgirl holding a gun to where butterflies were coming out of her neck.

His grandmother was sitting at the table with a cigarette. "Going to see that girl?" she asked.

"I hope so," Illya said. He felt good. He smiled. "There's a party tonight. She might be there."

His grandmother looked at him and took a really long drag on her cigarette. "That's a nasty shirt."

Illya looked down at it. "It's butterflies," he said.

"Ha," his grandmother said. She kept staring at the shirt. Illya noticed there was a white candle on the table.

His grandmother nodded at it. "For your grandfather," she said.

"Right," Illya said. "That's tomorrow." He sat down at the table. "Are we doing anything?"

His grandmother shrugged. "Maybe we'll go out to dinner. Primorski's or that place with the soup you like."

"Yeah," Illya said. He put his chin on his crossed wrists and looked at the candle.

His grandmother stubbed out her cigarette. "It's a shame you never met him," he said. "He was a good man. He died in the old country."

"Wrestling a bear?" Illya asked.

His grandmother snorted. "You could say that," she said. "You know, that was the old symbol for Russia. We were bears, all of us. Big and strong." She bared her teeth. "Angry. You..." She tilted her head to the side. "Maybe you're a weasel, I don't know. Or a mink. Skinny. Hiding in little holes."

"Because I don't eat meat," Illya said flatly.

His grandmother considered it. "No," she said finally, "bears eat honey too." She sat looking at him for a while. Illya looked at her.

Finally, his grandmother took out her pack of cigarettes and looked away from him. She started tapping the box on the table. "Forget that job," she said. "Go back to school. The community college has some nice accounting courses."

"I really don't want to have this conversation right now," Illya said.

"I mean it," his grandmother said, "you quit. You sleep all the time, you never smile. It's that job. What are you doing, selling lettuce to rich jerks like Margo Greenbaum?" She was starting to get loud. "This is what we risked our necks to get here for, this is why your grandfather died?"

"I dunno," said Illya, "I mean, Dad made a lot of money, that worked out well, right?"

His grandmother was quiet for a while. "Just go to your party," she said. "You don't care. Go see your girl. I can't tell you anything." She got up and went into the living room.

 

Illya took the subway over to Napoleon's place. It turned out to be a condo in the middle of a residential street. All of the condos were tan on the outside, and they all had trees with little white flowers planted in little patches of grass. The trees smelled like Port-a-Johns.

He passed Napoleon's apartment twice. He knocked on the door, then stood there with his hands in his pockets for a few minutes. He wondered if everyone had gone out for beer or something. He thought about turning around and going home. He thought about apologizing to his grandmother.

Finally, he looked in the window. There was a blonde girl and someone with dark hair sitting on the floor in front of a TV, but the person with dark hair was too skinny to be Napoleon. Illya tapped on the glass. The blonde girl looked at the window, then she turned her head backwards and said something that Illya couldn't hear clearly.

The door opened. "Hey," Napoleon said, and he looked surprised. "Come on in. We have beer and stuff."

Illya walked in. The entire place was very beige. The carpet was beige and the walls were beige. There was a gross-looking sofa in the room with the TV, which Illya guessed nobody was sitting on because it was gross. The TV was sitting on the floor.

"So this is kind of a housewarming party," Napoleon said. "I sort of just moved in."

"That's cool," said Illya. Napoleon started talking about the condo. He said something about hardwood floors and how he didn't really care about granite countertops, but his dad wanted them anyway, and then he stuck his hands in his pockets and they went into the living room.

"This is George," he said, "and Angel. You know George, and I think you met Angel at Marion's party."

Angel didn't turn around. "Fucker," she said, "die."

George turned around, but didn't let go of the game controller he was holding. "Hey," he said to Illya. "Do you remember me? I bet you don't remember me."

"Kind of," Illya said.

"From Belden." George seemed excited. "Remember? We played Magic in the cafeteria a few times."

"Oh, yeah," Illya said. "You were really into that game. It was funny."

"It's a cool game," George said.

Napoleon turned to Illya. "Yeah, George and I have known each other since, like, forever."

"Oh my god," Angel said, "how did you do that? You weren't even playing and you fragged me." She tilted her head back so that Illya could see her face upside-down. "Um, so hi."

"Do you want some nachos or something?" Napoleon asked. "I have nachos and stuff."

"Sure," Illya said. He followed Napoleon into the kitchen.

The kitchen was very black and white and it did have granite countertops. Illya touched them while Napoleon opened the fridge and took things out. "Do you like salsa?" he asked.

"I like salsa," Illya said.

"Okay," Napoleon said, "so." He took out a jar of salsa from the refrigerator. "They're pretty busy," he said, "I have the good TV so they come here and play Call of Duty or Dogs of War, mostly."

"What," Illya said, "your bros?"

Napoleon looked in the direction of the living room. "Mostly George and Angel. It's weird, I'm actually the one going out with her, but they spend a lot more time trying to kill each other's teams." He looked sort of proud when he said _I'm actually the one going out with her_.

Illya thought Napoleon might expect him to say something about how cool it was that Angel was going out with Napoleon. "Yeah," he said, "she's, um, she's blonde."

Napoleon laughed. "Yeah," he said, "she's blonde."

Illya felt as though he'd said something that he hadn't intended to say, like something that was a joke in a language he didn't know. He ate a chip. "This is good salsa," he said.

"Do you want a beer," Napoleon said. He got two beers out of the fridge and put them on the counter. "Ta-dah."

"Okay," Illya said, "thanks." He tried to twist the top from the beer. It didn't come off.

"Here," Napoleon said. He took the beer from Illya and wrapped the hem of his polo shirt around the cap. Then he handed the bottle back to Illya.

They drank beer. Napoleon looked surprised at the beer. He put it down on the counter and looked at Illya. "So," he said, "what have you been doing since ninth grade?"

Illya drank more of the beer. "Not a lot," he said.

"Like," Napoleon said, "you just disappeared. After ninth grade. And I sort of wondered."

Illya put down the beer. "I just went to a different school," he said.

"Oh," Napoleon said. He picked up the beer again. "Was it because of...you know."

"The swirlies," Illya said.

"Yeah," Napoleon said. He looked at the beer.

Illya thought about telling him that it was. He was pretty sure it would make Napoleon feel really bad, but he wasn't really sure if he wanted Napoleon to feel bad or not. He didn't think he liked Napoleon all that much, but it wasn't the kind of thing where he really wanted him to feel bad.

"Just family stuff," he said. "My dad. We couldn't afford it."

"Oh." Napoleon didn't look like he felt any better.

"I live with my grandma," Illya said. "I kind of support her."

"Oh," Napoleon said again. "Do you go to school and stuff?"

"Whole Foods," Illya said. "It's kind of like school. You do learn things."

"Well," Napoleon said. He drank more of the beer. "I'm going to NYU. Right now. Still." He looked at Illya. "It's been like six years. I still haven't finished my degree."

"Why not?" Illya asked.

Napoleon leaned against the granite countertop. "I don't know what I want to major in. My dad wants me to go into business and be the next Donald Trump. My mom thinks I should go into poli sci and be the next Ronald Reagan."

Illya laughed. "Reagan was an actor," he said. "Go be in movies with a monkey or something."

"Yeah, I know." Napoleon made a face. "I don't know. What would you major in?"

"Robotics," Illya said. "I like robots."

"Is that what you do?" Napoleon asked. "Build robots?"

The beer was really good. Illya was starting to feel sort of warm. "I just like them. Like Data. Or HAL. I'd build little uncomplicated friend robots with smiley faces. For people who didn't have friends."

"That's a good idea," Napoleon said. "Angel wants me to join her thing." He looked at the beer bottle and turned it around in his hands.

"Her thing," Illya said.

"I seriously thought you'd be doing something really major," Napoleon said, "like in the Peace Corps or the UN. You were such a smart kid."

"You sound like my grandma," Illya said, "stop it."

"Sorry, it's just...you seemed like you had it figured out," Napoleon said. "Like you totally knew exactly what you were doing and the rest of us were just screwing around. Did you want to build robots when you were a kid?"

"No," Illya said. "Yes. Yes. I did. I didn't know either, okay? And this is very weird."

"What?" Napoleon asked.

"I haven't seen you in a decade and you are having this crisis," Illya said, "and I don't know what I'm doing either so I can't really give you advice. So just stop it. Let's go play Tetris or whatever you have."

"Yeah," Napoleon said, "sorry. I think I have Katamari."

They went back to the living room. "I wanted to be a pro skater," Napoleon said, "like Tony Hawk. I was seriously into skateboarding when I was, like, twelve."

"I remember that," George said. "We'd go to that construction site and I'd take my BMX and we'd try to jump off stuff." He looked at Illya. "Dude was crazy. He'd ride on anything."

"Got you!" Angel crowed. She held up her controller in triumph. Illya looked at the screen. It showed a guy in a turban lying on the ground with blood coming out of his head. He was lying on a speckled brown surface that was probably supposed to be sand.

"Aw, shit," George said. "Best of three?"

"Move it, you guys," Napoleon said, "I'm gonna show Illya how to play Katamari."

Angel made a face that Illya thought was probably supposed to be cute. "Dogs of War is awesome," she said to Illya, "you should play it. George always plays the towelheads or gooks or whatever."

Napoleon winced. "That's actually what they're called," he said to Illya, "like, in the game. The side that's not American."

"I like their tactics," George said, "it's not just run around shooting people. In the Vietnam module, you get to construct your own tunnel mazes."

"I like running around shooting people," Angel said to George. She beamed at Napoleon. "And in a few months..."

"Yeah," Napoleon said, "maybe. Katamari?"


	3. Chapter 3

Angel stopped Napoleon when he tried to get another beer.

"Lay off that shit," she said. "It's all carbs."

Napoleon looked irritated. "I don't care," he said, "it's beer. Beer overrides any diet."

Angel pouted at him. "I thought you wanted to get in shape for Blackbird," she said. "The big recruitment thing is in a month, you need to lose about ten pounds if they're gonna let you get past the first stage of training."

"Wait," Illya said. "You're joining Blackbird."

Angel pointed at her purse, which was one of those Louis Vuitton rip-offs, except that instead of the LV logo, it had a kind of stylized repeating bird-in-flight thing. Illya remembered seeing that on Daily KOS before. "Fuck yeah."

Illya sat down next to George, feeling kind of dizzy. George was steadfastly ignoring everyone to play Dogs of War. Illya wan't sure whether the gruesome dead bodies was seeing were just on the screen or some sort of weird flashback from watching way too much streaming Al Jazeera on his laptop. "You know what they do," he said.

"Angel has this brochure," Napoleon said. "They're a security force. Like the Rent-a-Cops at the mall, but for countries instead of malls."

Angel nodded enthusiastically. "Exactly. They lend protection to countries who don't have a good enough army--like, if there's a civil war, or they're under invasion, shit like that. Kind of like the United Nations, except that instead of passing resolutions they go in and kick ass."

"Yeah, for huge amounts of money," George said without taking his eyes off the screen. "So, not really like the U.N. at all."

"Well, duh," Angel said. "We got to get paid."

"And you know what they're doing in Iraq," Illya said to Napoleon. "You must have heard about that shit."

"Kicking ass," Angel said shortly. She smiled at Napoleon and patted him on the shoulder. "Why don't I get you some white wine instead. I think we still have that moscato your dad gave us."

She left, and Illya shook his head and got up. "No way," he said. He'd seen pictures of Blackbird operatives in their berets and tight black jumpsuits, staring straight at the camera with unfocused eyes; grainy pictures of Blackbird soldiers in the all-encompassing body armor they wore in the field that made them look like Stormtroopers, waving around flamethrowers or hitting ragged Iraqis with batons or tazers. They never really seemed human, or even real.

Napoleon rolled his eyes. "I know," he said, "yeah, they're in Iraq. That's how the company got its start. They farm work out to prisons, high-tech labs, some companies."

"Mercenaries," Illya said, "like in a fucking comic book."

"Not as cool," George said. "They wanted to me to join, but the requirements are totally bullshit. You need to be able to bench-press fifty pounds and not look at Internet porn, stuff like that."

"Yeah, George didn't make the cut," Napoleon said.

"You're not gonna pass the Internet porn test," George said. He paused the game and turned around. "I'm not a corporate kind of guy, is the thing. Blackbird's pretty corporate. There's not a lot of room for personal initiative. Like, if you have an idea for a cool program or a startup or something, you can't even do that. They take your idea, even if you develop it on your own time. It belongs to them."

"It's not so bad if you're dedicated," Napoleon said. "I like the idea of security. I've wanted to do something like this ever since I was twelve, and I realized, look...the world is really fucked up, you know? You can get attacked for no reason. Things just fall apart and go crazy for no reason. We need people to make sure that doesn't happen."

"Okay," Illya said, "and the way to do that isn't to charge into places you think might be dangerous with a bunch of guns and body armor."

"It's not just charging in and shooting up shit," Napoleon said. "They provide restructuring services, too. They fix the economy, find someone to be in charge, institute democracy...all that good stuff."

"Sometimes you need to go in and kick ass before you can fuck around with democracy." Angel said from the kitchen. "Can you think of a better way to make sure people aren't just bombing the shit out of each other? It's all about pacifying."

"Oh my god," Illya said, "okay, first, maybe eliminating the gap between the poor and the rich would work? And not screwing over entire economies so we can maintain that standard of living that contributes to the, the, the, the fucking gap, okay, it's fucking huge, if we were self-sustaining maybe we wouldn't need to piss people off that much--" He was aware that his heart was starting to race and he was probably sweating, and the words seemed to be coming out of his mouth way too quickly, like he was reciting every article he'd read on Pandagon all at the same time.

"Dude," George said, "breathe. Please."

"Right," Angel said, returning from the kitchen, "shopping at the Salvation Army is going to make world peace happen." She smiled sweetly and gave everyone a glass. "Seriously," she said to Illya, "you look like a homeless person and you kind of smell like one, and that stupid scarf makes you look gay."

"It's for solidarity with the Palestinians," Illya said.

"Aren't you Jewish?" Napoleon asked. "You don't support Israel?"

"It's a really fucking complicated issue," Illya said.

"Napoleon told me you work at Whole Foods!" Angel chirped, and poured wine into his glass. "I think you're mad 'cause you know that you're not really doing shit to help anyone, and we are."

"Fuck you," Illya said. "George, if you want to play Magic sometime, hit me up on Facebook." He went outside and took a deep breath, then slumped down onto the porch and tried to make sure nobody could see him from the window. Getting worked up about anything in an actual argument always seemed like a form of losing, something embarrassing.

"Hi," Marian said to him. "Are you okay? Did Napoleon's Axe get to you or something?"

Illya closed his eyes and sighed. "Do you have a cigarette?"

Marian pulled her American Spirits out of her purse and handed him one. "I thought you gave up smoking."

Illya stuck it in his mouth and didn't light it. Just tasting the tobacco was almost enough to calm him down. "That was like a year ago. I was only straight-edge for a few months."

"Yeah," Marian said, "I remember you broke edge right after that Contravene show. Like, it was so shitty that you just couldn't stay edge."

"It was Passover that night," Illya said. He felt his heart slowing a little and realized he was able to move his hands without them shaking. "You have to drink wine. It's like a commandment."

"And you actually got drunk," Marian said, laughing, "on the freaking Maneshevitz, and you called me up super-drunk and you were like, Marian, God made me break edge. God and my grandma."

"Yeah," Illya said, "and then you came over and brought a 40 and we were like, fuck it." He grinned. "That was so awesome."

"That was awesome," Marian said. She sat down next to Illya. "You want to go back in?"

Illya shook his head. "I really can't. I just got in a huge argument with Angel. I think they're mad at me."

"She's just a bitch," Marian said. "She was at the party, remember? She said my spinach dip tasted like catfood and asked me to put on some music everyone could dance to, like, oh god, what did she say. Like Ke$ha. She really wanted me to put on that 'Blah, Blah, Blah' song. She said I was a stupid bitch when I said I didn't have it."

"Oh god," Illya said.

"Don't take it too personally," Marian said. She patted Illya on the back. "She's kind of messed up. She's from Iowa or Idaho or somewhere bullshit, and I think she's overcompensating for feeling like a small-town girl in the big city."

"No," Illya said, "it's that she's fucking working for Blackbird. And she's trying to get Napoleon to join."

"Oooh," Marian said. "That's not good."

"Nope," Illya said. He closed his eyes. From behind, he thought he could hear the vague sound of arguing. "I'm sorry about, you know, the other night."

"Yeah," Marian said, "about that. Look, I want you to know that--give me that cigarette back if you're just going to suck on it--I think of you as a really good friend, and that's not going to change, but I also really like you, and that has nothing to do with us being friends, but the fact that you don't feel the same way kind of hurts, and I'm just going to have to take a while to get over that." She took a deep breath. "I spent about a half hour in the car reciting that."

"Okay," Illya said. "Thank you." He took the cigarette out of his mouth.

"Also," Marian said, "are you gay?"

Illya's mouth involuntarily opened, and he put the cigarette back in it.

"You can tell me," Marian said. "You know I won't be mad at you. Actually, I'll be less mad at you."

"It's the scarf, isn't it," Illya said.

"I thought that was for Palestine," Marian said. "No, it's not the scarf, it's just..." She sat down next to Illya. "I thought there was some serious chemistry going on between us. I'm usually good at reading that kind of thing. But you're saying you're not into me, and I know it's not that you don't like hanging out with me. And you said you didn't want to complicate things, but I don't know what that means."

"I like us being friends," Illya said. "How is that ambiguous?"

Marian made a frustrated sound. "Okay. Are you not wanting to complicate things because you're like, oh, I like Marian, but it's going to complicate things if we get together and I'd rather stay friends than risk a really awkward relationship and a breakup?"

"Um," Illya said. He tilted his head up and looked at the clouds. The clouds weren't very complicated at all.

"Or," Marian said cautiously, "is it like, Wow, I like hanging out with Marian, she's really cool, but I don't know if I like her that way and I don't want things to be awkward if we try to go out and I'm still not into her that way?"

"Wow," Illya said, "you really thought about this." He looked at Marian and tried to imagine kissing her. It felt weird. "I don't think I like you that way," he said. "I mean, I'd have to think about it."

"If you haven't thought about it, that probably means you don't," Marian said. She sounded disappointed.

"I haven't thought about sex in a really long time, actually," Illya said. "Like, it's not a thing. I haven't even wanted to kiss anyone."

Marian frowned at nothing. "Weird," she said, in a voice that sounded kind of worried, or kind of like she was trying to sound worried.

"Yeah," Illya said, "I dunno. I think it's a sign of depression or something."

Marian didn't say anything. She put her arm around Illya's shoulder.

"You want me to help you get anything out of the car?" Illya said. "I know you usually bring stuff to parties."

"Yeah," Marian said, "thanks. I brought tzaziki dip."

Illya went over to Marian's little Gremlin, which was so covered in bumper stickers that the original paint color was barely visible, and took one large plastic container and one smaller plastic container out of the car. Marian took out a huge bag of pita chips.

"I made some with soygurt just for you," Marian said.

"Aww," Illya said, "thanks. You're not mad at me. You made me treats."

"I was trying not to be mad," Marian said. "I made the shit out of that dip. I have never, ever used so much garlic in my life. I got it at the farmer's market from some Amish or something. I'm pretty sure it counts as a biological weapon."

Illya put the containers on the porch. "Do you want to just take these in?"

"What, you're not going back in? Man up." Marian put the bag of pita chips on her shoulder like she was toting a keg, and knocked on the door.

George opened it and looked surprised. "Are you..." He trailed off, like he didn't even know where Marian could have come from.

"She brought dip," Illya said, and proffered the containers.

"Dip is good," George said, and taked the Tupperware from him. "I wouldn't go in the kitchen just yet."

Illya slipped past George while Marian smiled at him and introduced herself. He flattened himself against the wall that divided the living room from the kitchen.

"...a total bitch to my friend," Napoleon said. "I'm trying to reconnect with him and you have to go and piss him off. Don't act like you didn't know what you were doing."

"He's an asshole," Angel said, "he comes in here and he eats your food and drinks your beer and totally takes advantage of your hospitality and then just dumps on everything we stand for. It's not fair."

"The dude has a right to state his opinion," Napoleon said. "You don't have to insult him just because he disagrees with you."

"I'm sorry, I'm just not going to make a big deal out of being nice to some rude little punk you picked up," Angel said.

"Then leave," Napoleon said. "If you can't disagree with people without calling them gay or homeless, just leave."

"Fine," Angel said.

Angel came out of the kitchen and stared at Marian. "Oh, it's one big hippie party, great."

Marian smiled at her. "Hi!" she said. "I made dip."

" _You're_ a dip," Angel muttered, and went out and slammed the door.

Napoleon came out of the kitchen. "Great party, huh? Oh, hey, Marian, you brought that cucumber stuff? Sweet."

They took the dip and the chips into the kitchen and sat around eating them for a while. Napoleon said how good the dip was. George tried mixing the dip and the salsa, and said it wasn't a good idea. Illya ate from his own little container of soy dip and felt kind of dumb.

"I have to go," Illya said finally. "I promised a friend I'd go to his thing."

"What thing?" Marian asked.

"It's an anti-colonial thing," Illya said. "You can come if you want, I don't think it's invitation-only."

"Can I come?" Napoleon asked.

Illya shrugged. "It's kind of a hippie political thing. I don't think you'd be into it."

"I'm pretty sure I'd be good with it," Napoleon said.

"Yeah," Illya said, "but...you're into that whole Blackbird thing. That's pretty much the opposite."

"Oh, boy," George said to Marian.

"Blackbird isn't about colonialism," Napoleon said, "it's about stability--economic, cultural, and political stability. And I don't even know if I'm going to join." He ate a chip. "I like the idea, but there's a lot of it that kind of freaks me out."

"Like the Internet porn thing," George said.

"Seriously, what kind of organization won't let you look at that stuff _on your own time_? And there's other stuff. The whole corporate culture. The black jumpsuits and berets thing. Sure, that shit looks cool...Angel looks really hot in her uniform," Napoleon admitted.

"So did the Nazis," Illya says. "Their uniforms were designed by Hugo Boss."

"Which you boycott," Marian said. "Of course."

"I can't afford Hugo Boss," Illya said. "And I hate designer shit anyway."

"I think the Blackbird uniforms are some other thing," Napoleon said. "Hilfiger."

"Ed Hardy," Illya said.

"Oh god," Marian said, "Ed Hardy Nazi suits. They'd have those little skull-and-hearts things instead of the SS logo."

"I like Ed Hardy," Napoleon said. "Old tats are awesome."

Marian slapped Napoleon on the shoulder. "You do? Come on, that's so...cliche. Ed Hardy. Seriously."

"He liked Ed Hardy before Ed Hardy was cool," George said defensively.

"That's legit," Illya said. "I think. So you're coming to this thing? There'll be, like...hippies. And more soy stuff." He wasn't really sure if he was trying to dissuade Napoleon from coming or not. He liked that whatever it was could be some kind of secret between Alex and him, something he'd been picked to do.

"I want to see what you think," Napoleon said. "I don't know if I'll agree with everything anyone says, but I'm pretty sure it'll be interesting."

"Well," Marian said, "I'm game."

Napoleon looked at George. "You gonna stay here and play Dogs?"

"I dunno," George said, "are you leaving this cucumber stuff?"

"Taking it with," Marian said.

"Coming with," George said.

 

They took Marian's car to the address Illya had written down. It turned out to be a small brownstone in the East Forties.

"This is a really nice neighborhood," Illya said.

"Yeah," Marian said. "I think my parents have friends here."

"I thought they lived in Park Slope," Illya said.

"We used to live here," Marian said. "Like, all this is really familiar." She parked the car and made Napoleon and George carry the chips and dip. "Illya and I carried it last time, so it's on you now."

Illya went up and down the street, looking for the exact address. He liked the neighborhood a lot more than Napoleon's neighborhood. It seemed comfortable, with old, shady trees and a lot of old brick.

He found it and found the button marked with a circle, like the card said, and pressed it.

"Who's there?" the buzzer asked. It was very tinny and crackled, but it was definitely Alex's voice.

"Illya," Illya said. "From Whole Foods."

The buzzer was quiet for a minute. "The last time we were in contact," Alex said, "what were my purchases?"

Illya looked at Napoleon, George, and Marian, who were waiting behind him. He sighed.

"A pound of organic Concord grapes, a thing of vanilla-flavored protein powder, and two gluten-free croissants," he said.

"Thank you," Alex said. "Come up, please."

They climbed a staircase to get to Alex's. The staircase smelled like old beef stew, or old books.

Alex opened the door for them. "You brought friends," he said, and his eyebrows creased.

"This is Marian," Illya said, "she made the dip."

"Hi!" Marian said brightly.

"Hi," Napoleon said, shifting the containers to one arm and sticking out his other hand, "Napoleon Solo. Great to meet you."

Alex gave him a peace sign and dropped his hand. He leaned over to Illya and whispered, "Are all of these people...trustworthy?"

"Um," Illya said, "I'm pretty sure."

Alex let them in. "I'm sorry about the unexpected quiz," he said, "but security must be a little tight around here. Next time we'll set up a formal password."

"It's going to be 'password'," George muttered, "it always is when old people set shit up."

Alex's apartment was weird. Illya noticed lots of old-looking, heavy furniture with claws carved into the legs, and lots of stuff that looked like it had been hand-crocheted, and lots of ethnic art on the walls scattered between Peter Max prints. It looked rich. There were other people standing around, drinking kombucha or what looked like cloudy tea and commenting on the Peter Max pictures and holding plates of other types of chips with other types of dip. He said "Hi" to some of them. Some of them looked pretty much like people he'd seen at crust punk shows, and some of them looked like old hippies, and some of them were actually wearing suits, which struck him as sort of weird. They said "Hi" to him back and looked a little lost.

Alex went around closing the blinds and getting everyone to sit in the living room. Then he turned on a few lava lamps, which made Napoleon snort and made everything look sort of red and pink, and he pulled down a white screen from the ceiling.

"Oh, God," George said, "Powerpoint."

"Much older than that," Alex said, and laughed. "This is an old-fashioned slide show, young man. I wouldn't dare to put these photos on anything computerized--they're much too valuable."

The first slide was a picture of a jungle somewhere. "San Veronica," Alex said, "Early 1964. The nation still reeling from Kennedy's assassination, but not yet from the Beatles. Unusual flooding in San Veronica leaves the nation fecund, but a little economically vulnerable."

A picture of a man with an impressive moustache. "Generalissimo Mostra had unified the country under a Communist regime some years before. I got to shake the man's hand, once. It was not an unstable country, all in all. He was a good man. Not a great one, but a good one."

A picture of some steel ships. "That was when the United States chose to invade. They believed the country to be dangerously unstable under Mostra's rule, and feared the spectre of Communism spreading to other nearby island nations. Or so they said."

Alex started flipping through pictures rapidly. "I was part of the team sent to foment revolution. We sailed to San Veronica in United States steamships. We ate fruit cocktail from the United Fruit Company every single day. San Veronica wasn't unstable--the peasants were struggling, but still able to farm. They had great faith in the benevolence of the land, and in Mostra's leadership."

The door opened, and a shorter man in a business suit came in. "Sorry I'm late," he said to Alex. He looked at everyone. "There are a lot of people here," he said, also to Alex.

"Yes," said Alex, "quite a lot of people."

The shorter man took Alex's arm and they went off to the side of the room. Illya could see part of a palm tree reflected on the side of Alex's face. "I thought this was going to be small," he heard the other man say. "Manageable. Just the people we picked."

"They brought friends," Alex said. "People are very interested in what we have to say, it seems."

"They're going to be useless," the other man said.

"We don't know that," Alex said. "The more we have to work with, the better."

Napoleon leaned over to Illya. "Looks like we got your friend into trouble."

"I'm pretty sure it's fine," Illya said. He was wondering what use they were supposed to be. He was pretty sure he didn't have any major skills apart from stacking clementines and finding cool shirts online. This was sounding less like a discussion group about colonialism and more like something he'd somehow accidentally volunteered to do, some airing of Alex's old grievances and PTSD.

Alex smiled and went back to the projector. "This is my partner Dan," he said to everyone. The shorter man was standing at the front of the room, arms crossed. "Dan was in San Veronica with me."

"Different divisions," Dan said. "I was in the IMF--not the International Monetary Fund. There is no more IMF, which is why I can tell you this. It's defunct. Alex's division is still in existence. He can't even tell you what it's called."

"I can't," Alex said. "Dan is correct. But I can tell you about my experiences working for them." He started flipping pictures again. The pictures went from smiling children, lush rainforests, and peaceful villages to pictures of those things on fire. "We were ordered to create discord by any means possible. Sometimes we would claim to be for Mostra, sometimes against him. We didn't just destroy houses or people--we destroyed the entire social fabric of San Veronica." Alex went quiet just long enough for it to be awkward. "We used flamethrowers," he said. "Children would hide from us in the swamps and in the forests, and we were ordered to clear the land with flamethrowers. Never mind who might be in there. The land was important. They needed it bare. The peasants, their little plots of land where they grew their food--where they'd survived for decades. We trampled everything. Burned everything."

Dan cleared his throat. "This operation," he said, "was at the behest of the United Fruit Company, as we later found out. As soon as Mostra had been overthrown and a puppet dictator put in his place, every piece of land that wasn't burned to the ground was purchased by the United Fruit Company. Banana groves especially. Most of San Veronica is still under their thumb today. This is why you can get them for sixty-nine cents a pound, by the way," he added.

Illya looked at the picture on the screen, which was a picture of a banana tree on fire. He thought about the bananas he'd put the sign on at Whole Foods and wondered if the plantations still looked like that today, if there was some huge banana plantation that had once been villages, how the bananas had traveled all the way from some burnt-out village in San Veronica to the Whole Foods where he worked. The bottom of his stomach felt cold.

Dan went over to the projector. "Alex," he said quietly, "Alex...here. Let me have that. I can do this part of the presentation."

"I'm fine," Alex insisted.

"You're not," Dan said, "you have that look. Go in the kitchen and have some tea. I'll take over." He patted Alex on the shoulder. Alex went in the kitchen.

Napoleon leaned over to Illya again. "Are they...like..." He made a vague gesture.

"I don't know," Illya said, "all I do is bag the guy's groceries."

"I think it's sweet," Marian said. "These macho dude soldiers who met on this uber-dangerous mission and _found_ each other. Oh my god." She nudged Illya. "Don't you think it's sweet?"

Illya stuffed a pita chip in his mouth. It was weirder and weirder, seeing Alex's past, his personal life. He really wanted Alex to just be the guy at Whole Foods. He wished he'd lost the card.

"Does anyone know how to--never mind." The screen got very bright for a second and there was a chunking sound. "Damn it," Dan said. "I'm sorry, Alex knows how to work this thing best."

"Let me try," George said. "AV club." He went over to the projector and fiddled with it. The screen darkened, and a new picture slid into place. It did look like a Powerpoint presentation. There were boxes connected to each other with writing in them. Illya could read things like "Blackbird" and "North Central Positronic Corporation" and "ConAgra Foods" and the names of a few politicans he mostly knew from being made fun of the "The Daily Show."

"It's common knowledge that most of these groups are affiliated with each other," Dan said. "North Central Positronic is funded by the government as a contractor, and they supply Blackbird with its high-tech weapons and gadgetry. Blackbird, in turn, has initialized hostile operations in countries overseas for the benefit of these companies--I'm not going to read them all off. And of course, NewsCorp..."

Illya felt like he had already heard what Dan was going to say, like the patterns were familiar. He got up and went into the kitchen.

Alex was sitting at the table, sipping from a china cup and playing with some cherry tomatoes on a plate. He looked up at Illya. "I have very few vices left," he said. "Dan likes to insist on clean living. The only thing I am allowed is green tea--and not the fun kind."

"Yeah," Illya said. He sat down. "Sorry about bringing more people. I didn't know."

Alex waved the apology away. "Never mind that. Dan will come around very quickly."

"It's just that my friend out there," Illya said, "he's going into Blackbird--"

Alex put down the cup. "That's very dangerous," he said. "Very dangerous."

"I know," Illya said, "that's why I brought him here. I don't think he really wants to join. It's his girlfriend," he explained.

"Mmm," Alex said. He raised his cup again and looked at Illya over the rim. "The blonde girl? She doesn't look like the type."

"No," Illya said, "she's my--I dunno, it's not her." He crossed his arms on the table and put his chin on his arms. "That's Marian," he said, "she used to work at Whole Foods too."

"Ah," Alex said.

"I'm not dating her, either," Illya said.

Alex stared at the cherry tomato like it had made him sad. He gestured at the living room. "You should be listening to what Dan has to say."

"I know all this stuff already," Illya said. "San Veronica. ConAgra. Fox News." He took a cherry tomato and rolled it back and forth across the table. "I don't know what you want," he said, "but I don't know if I can do it. I'm not an activist, I don't like committees and handing out flyers and stuff. And talking to people. I can't do that."

"You talked to me," Alex said. He smiled. "I think you are capable of far more than you think you are. And nobody will ask you to pass out flyers."

The lights in the living room went on. People started talking.

Napoleon and George came into the kitchen. "...not the way to combat big corporate," George said. "You can't fight them. It's just a fact. You can't make them stop doing shady shit. What you can do is compete in the marketplace. Look at Apple versus IBM. Apple started out as this little independent computer company, and now it has a huge market share."

"I thought you didn't like Apple," Napoleon said. "I thought you said they were sellouts."

"When did I say that?" George asked.

"When you jailbroke your iPhone, and then you dropped it and you took it in to the Genius bar to get it fixed, and the guy said you'd voided the warranty," Napoleon said.

"Yeah, well, they are sellouts," George said. "You can't do shit with an iPhone. It's all this big glossy interface that doesn't let you in. You don't have any power as a user and you don't have any tools to create anything you need."

"The apps," Napoleon said.

"Oh, bullshit, they totally censor those," George said. "My point is, we need to make tools of technology and commerce available to the guy on the street so he can compete instead of trying to screw with the marketplace."

"But those same corporations are deliberately trying to strangle fair trade," Alex said. "Certainly, we need to remove that block from the marketplace before anyone will be able to compete."

Illya hated it when people started talking about iPhones. He went into the living room. Marian was talking to someone Illya recognized from Tumblr, a genderqueer drag artist named Cori Ander. Cori was blonde today, and was twirling a lock of hir hair around hir index finger.

"...and Dan says that my genderfluidity and mastery of the art of disguise is gonna make me a totally killer agent," Cori said. "I'm super excited to apply my experience in the field of deconstructing gender norms to, like, secret agenting. How cool is that?"

"Rock on," Marian said. She saw Illya and rolled her eyes.

"So what do you do?" Cori asked Marian.

"I bake," Marian said, "and I knit, and I like to throw parties."

"Oh, so you're doing the ironic femme thing? Like, reclaiming the traditional feminine arts as a choice rather than an imposition?" Cori looked excited. Illya put his hands in his pockets and wondered if it would be cool to ask hir for an autograph.

"I just like to bake and shit," Marian said in a fake chirpy voice. She grinned very widely. Illya was pretty sure that whatever she was going to say next was going to be designed specifically to piss Cori off.

"Hey," he said to Cori, "hey, do I, like...know you from Tumblr?"

 

"It's not that I don't like genderqueer people," Marian said outside, and took out an American Spirit, "but it's not like everyone is going around consciously deconstructing gender norms or whatever and basing everything do they off that. It's like, I like to bake, and I don't really care if I like it because it's a girly thing. I fucking like cookies."

"You make good cookies," Illya said. He looked at where Cori had written "CORI ANDER <3" on his arm. "What did ze say about secret agenting? I missed that part of it."

"I know," Marian said. "It's kind of..." She lit the cigarette and squinted at the setting sun. "Ambitious. There were about twenty people in that room, and half of them left. What the hell are we supposed to do with ten people? How are we supposed to compete with these multinational forces which apparently have billions of people and trillions of dollars and control everything and...all this shit. Oh god, you should have heard him talking." She waved her cigarette around. "Woooo. Sneak around with guns, fight colonialism and oppression."

"You're not into it?" Illya asked.

"It's a cool idea," Marian said. "Sort of Mod Squad-y. But this shit isn't perpetrated through isolated incidents that we can prevent, it's happening all the time, constantly. Forget about big corporations--how are you supposed to prevent genocide? How are you supposed to prevent poverty?"

"We can't," Dan said. He'd come outside too. "American Spirits, huh?"

"They say cigarettes will kill ya," Marian said, quoting a line from a Johnny Hobo song they both liked, "but at least these'll make you feel it."

"It's always good to be aware," Dan said. He pulled a pack of Marlboros out of his pocket and lit one. "No, we can't prevent all the world's evils. I know Alex would like to. He thinks big. But that's up to other people now. We have one specific enemy and one specific goal. We have objectives. We have game plans."

"And we're supposed to just do them," Marian said, "and we have no idea how you know all this stuff or if you're telling the truth or what."

"Up to you," Dan said. He nodded at Marian. "What do you do?"

"I bake," she said. "I take photos of shit."

"If you can bake a cake," Dan said, "you can build a bomb. And hell, photographic evidence of atrocity is worth its weight in gold. Can ruin regimes." Dan dropped his cigarette on the ground and ground it under his shoe. "Up to you," he said again, and went inside.

"Huh," Marian said, "are you going to do it?"

"I don't know," Illya said, "are you?"

"I don't know," Marian said. "It's a lot."

Illya looked at the sidewalk, then at Marian. "I'm kind of sick of not doing a lot," he said.

 

In the car on the way home, Napoleon seemed excited. "How cool is that?" he asked nobody in particular. "How fucking cool? Sneak around with guns, fight colonialism and oppression."

"Jesus," George said, "you and anything with guns."

"It's not the guns," Napoleon said, "it's the sneaking. Don't tell me it's not cool."

"It's cool," George said. "It is cool. I will admit that. No restrictions on Internet porn."

"That too," Napoleon said. "Oh, and my dad's gonna be really, really pissed. Really, really fucking pissed."

"Is that wise?" George asked. "He owns your apartment, dude, that is a sweet pad."

Illya was thinking about his grandma. "Sneaking around with guns," he said. He tried to imagine himself in a camo suit, or in a wifebeater and dogtags, running around a jungle with an Uzi in his hand like Alex had. He tried to imagine himself walking around New York with a pistol, constantly aware that it was by his hand, constantly aware of danger. It sounded scary. His grandma would probably worry. She'd probably be proud of him.

"Basically, yeah," Napoleon said. "Real dangerous. Totally awesome."

Marian had been quiet. "We're going to get killed," she said finally. "We're all going to get totally fucked up and killed." She started to laugh.


End file.
